Friday, August 9, 2013

WrestlingNerd's Mini-Reviews: TNA Impact Wrestling 8/8/13 Review

What up wrestling fans, I'm the WrestlingNerd bringing you another edition of mini-reviews. Today we take a look at TNA Impact Wrestling 8/8/13. After a week to think about TNA's plug for Bellator, what's next on the radar? Let's find out and begin.

Since TNA readers might be new to mini-reviews, let me explain how this works. The idea is to review the show, but not be as long as a typical review. There's gonna be stuff that gets left out on purpose since I need to keep it short. With that said, let's really begin.

We open up the show with Mike Tenay being kicked off commentary since Aces & Eights was taking over the both. You really know things aren't high on the Aces & Eights priority list if they have to run Tenay out of town. That's like a school bully not having anybody to bully, so he resorts to stealing your napkins since he has nothing better to do. Bully Ray talks about himself until Chris Sabin arrives. After a few weeks of Sabin as champion, I'm afraid to say I was right in how this would turn out. Sabin isn't engaging at all when he talks. I really wanted to give him a chance, but his promos are as basic as you're gonna get and really aren't that appealing. In fact, I'm not even sure how well this move increased viewership, so I don't think this has gone the way TNA envisioned. Again, Sabin is a good mid-card talent, but he's not ready for the main event and I'm not sure if he'll ever be. Brooke Hogan announced that if Bully loses his rematch, he will never get a world title match again… Oh no! And since it's TNA, let's end with a dick innuendo.

Jeff Hardy defeated Samoa Joe in a BFG Series match thanks to Mr. Anderson going the sinister thing of standing up during his match…

Again, you think Main Event Mafia would run backup for their guys at all times, but perhaps the MEM is on a budget as well. Sorry brother, but we can only afford you five-minutes of protection per month… but we're totally family. So, we cool? We cool!? Anyway, the next match was Magnus vs Anderson. The match was a bore until Bobby Roode ran interference by hitting Anderson with a steel chair. Due to the circumstances, Magnus loses 10 points while Anderson picks up pity points. Roode claims he did this since he wants to even the playing field. I kinda like this edition to Roode's character since it makes him a bigger asshole than before.

Do you ever notice how the stars of TNA have the most boring entrance themes? It's like TNA bought a keyboard and literally push a button and *BOOM*, instant entrance theme. Some are more defined than others (AJ Styles, Jeff Hardy, Bobby Roode), but a lot of them sound the same. We are about to find out about Tito Ortiz and he says a few words until Kurt Angle interrupts to talk about respect. Didn't we go through this a few weeks ago when Rampage appeared? It's literally the same intro as before. Damn, at least try to do something different. Yeah, so a pretty underwhelming segment to say the least. In the meantime, Bellator is counting up the extra PPV buys they're getting after all the extra 'ads'.

Bad Influence use the rules to their advantage to get a double countout, thus both of them get two points. I actually thought it was pretty funny. After the match, Bobby shows up again and claims the three of them are creating a new stable. They claim by coming together as a team, they have the best odds of winning the BFG Series. I know it's another stable in the mix, but I actually don't mind this one since Bad Influence is already entertaining and I can see Bobby as a decent leader. In all honestly, that was my favorite part of the show. The final match of the night is Team 3D vs Sabin and Kurt. Thanks to that lucky rabbit foot that's wrapped around Sabin's dick, Sabin manages to pull off another miracle by pinning Bully with a crossbody. The show ends with Sabin and DWI Angle celebrating their victory. While on the subject, really Kurt? You didn't learn your lesson the first time? You can afford all this alcohol to get yourself drunk/buzzed, but can't afford yourself a cab? Instead of doing the responsible thing, you put innocent lives in danger just because of your bull-headedness? I respect you Kurt as a performer, but you son of a bitch!!! I apologize for getting on that soapbox, but I needed to get this out of the way because this is something I have zero tolerance for.

Overall Impression:

One of the main reasons I turned this into a mini-review is because the show felt very filler-esque. There wasn't a whole lot in terms of storylines this evening and the theme of the show was to build up next week's Hardcore Justice. While they did hype it up, something a little more eye-popping for tonight's show would've helped deliver the message more effectively. While some of the matches were decent enough to sit through, I don't think it's something I would go back and watch a second time. Probably my favorite part of the show was the Bad Influence match, but that's because those guys always seem to find a way to make me laugh. Even after debuting Tito Ortiz a week ago, the follow-up was pretty weak and you got a half-ass reason for his arrival, thus shining more light on my theory that TNA only brought in Tito so they could get a paycheck from Spike for some shameless advertising. I do hope this all works out for them, but don't be surprised if this blows up in their face. That does it for the mini-review and I hope you enjoyed it. Tell me what you thought of my review or tonight's show. I will see you guys and girls in the next one.